Get ready to work harder than you ever have before once you’re working for yourself!

It's crazy, but REWARDING!

Friday, May 27, 2011

Today is my last day at one of the greatest company that I’ve worked with – CustomWare. I truly am humbled to have worked with such a group of “get in and get it happening people” and I am so proud of the achievements that the company have accomplished. I’ve learned a great deal here both in technology & core values, and will definitely miss all of you.

What next for me?

Continue with my house renovation (has been delayed for few months!)

Finish up Thesis for Master in IT and hopefully set up VIVA with university panel by July, 2011 (unbelievable!, this has been delayed for more 3 years!)

Sunday, April 17, 2011

In SharePoint, you could send email programmatically by using either .NET Class Library or SharePoint Object Model. I always prefer the second method since using SharePoint ensures that the required settings are maintained by Central Administration.

SPMalaya Google Search Results Web Part displays the search results and the properties associated with Google Custom Search Engine (CSE). You will need to configure hosting page option in the Google Search Box Web Part in order for this web part to work.

SPMalaya Content Best Bet Web Part displays high-confidence best bet related to the content of your page.

I created this product as part of my hobbies and certainly I am not working full time - I work on WEEKENDS ONLY (I wish my kids went to bed at 9pm each night on weekends)!

So, if you have any support issues, feel free to put your comments on this page: http://sharepointmalaya.blogspot.com. If I unable to come back to you in a timely fashion, then I am sure you will get help from the communities ;).

Monday, March 28, 2011

By default, the database is called WSS_Logging should be the starting point for administrators and developers to collect and analyse information. The following demonstrates how to access the database and run a view (that already is installed) against it.

Open up SQL Server Management Studio

When asked for authentication, log in to the correct instance where SharePoint is running using your windows authentication credentials

Navigate to the WSS_Logging database and click on the plus sign to expand it as shown in figure below:

Under the toolbar at the top, click on the New Query button

In the new query window, type in the following query:

SELECT * FROM RequestUsage

Click Execute.

Results are populated in the window pane below the query, as seen in the following screenshot:

RequestUsage is an out of the box view that provides site usage information. It provides information such as the referring URL, the browser being used, the site ID, the web ID, the server URL, the request type, and when it was done. There are 24 views installed by default as shown in figure below:

The logging database contains, but is not limited to, the following information:

You can decorate the public properties of the web part class with the following attributes from System.ComponentModel so that your web part can runs in a stateless environment, like SharePoint:

WebDisplayName - This string shows as the label for the control in the Editor pane.

WebDescription - This string shows as a tooltip over the display name.

WebBrowsable - When this Boolean is set to true, the end user will be able to see the property in the Editor pane. Set it to false to imperatively set the property’s value on behalf of the end user.

Personalizable - This enum has two settings:

PersonalizationScope.Shared indicates that SharePoint should only store one value for everyone.

PersonalizationScope.User indicates that SharePoint should still store one common value for everyone, but allow anyone who has permission to personalize to change that value to whatever he or she would like it to be.

Sunday, March 27, 2011

Whenever SharePoint modifies the web.config file, it creates a backup copy with a BAK extension as shown in figure below:

These backup files can be helpful on the occasion a previous version of the web.config is needed. However, when you deploy SharePoint assets using MS Visual Studio for iterative development, they can accumulate a ton of unwanted files.

The following steps teach you how to run DOS command after each successful deployment will keep the web application IIS home directory much tidier.

Edit the CustomFooter.master file by clicking on the Edit File button.

From the ribbon, click the Skewer Click button, as shown in Figure below. This enables you to see the CSS that is being applied to a specific object.

With Skewer Click selected, hover over the area near where the Recycle Bin and All Site Content links are located. Move your mouse around the area and you should see the name PlaceHolderQuickLaunchBottom appear faintly.

Select it and another window will open displaying a list of styles. Click the style called ul.s4-specialNav…, as shown in figure below.

Before you can edit the CSS, you must first add a new panel to SPD. From the ribbon, click the Style tab and select the CSS Properties button.

When the new panel opens, you’ll see the top section is called Applied Rules. The style you want to modify (.s4specialNavLinkList) should already be selected as shown in figure below.

Right click the style and select New Style Copy.

At the top of the New Style dialog shown in figure below, set the new style to be defined in the “Current page”. Be sure to check the box “Apply new style to document selection”. Then select the Layout category and set the “visibility” to “hidden”. Click OK.

Save the changes made to the master page.

Now open your site in the web browser, you’ll see that a footer has been applied to your site, as shown below:

After you’ve made the change, save the fi le by clicking the Save icon in the upper left-hand corner of the screen. You will get a dialog that warns you that you are about to customize the file from the site definition. Click Yes to continue.

Click the Master Pagelink again from the Navigation pane on the left to return to the Master Pages gallery.

To apply the changes to the site, select SharePointMalayaFooter.master and then, from the ribbon, click the Set as Default button.

Now open your site in the web browser, you’ll see that a footer has been applied to your site, as shown below:

Saturday, March 12, 2011

One of the coolest feature of SharePoint Designer 2010 is the ability to check the user currently who logged in and to switch to a different user whenever you need to.

Remember the old SharePoint 2007 where you need to first login to the site, and then only you can open it using SharePoint Designer. Let say, you might be logged in with an administrator account. If you wanted to test something as a different user, how would you do that? Yeah, you’ll need to close the site and browser, login using different username via browser and open the site using SharePoint Designer 2007. Mmmmm… well, with SharePoint 2010 you don’t need to do that anymore!

To check the current user currently logged in, with open SharePoint Designer 2007, if you look in the bottom-left corner, you’ll see a tiny little person icon, as shown below:

Hovering over the icon with your mouse shows the name of the user currently logged in.